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I built a product from scratch while raising a baby in Berlin.
Designed in Figma. Built with Claude Code. Deployed on Vercel. No engineers, no agency, no sprints.
ElternPop is a free resource for international families navigating Germany's parental benefit system. It has an Elterngeld calculator built on official government formulas, step-by-step guides, and a Berlin activity map for kids.
Day one: 150+ visits, no paid ads.
Day five: 161 daily unique users, 82% mobile.
A user found a €10 calculator bug. Fixed and deployed the same afternoon.
I'm a Senior Product Designer with 15+ years across B2B SaaS, AI products, and founding roles. I've built design systems, led research across international markets, and designed features that moved real metrics.
ElternPop is what that experience looks like when one person owns the whole thing.
If you're looking for a designer who can think in systems and ship, I'm available!
elternpop.com
Elternpop | Guide for expat parents in Berlin
Guides and tools for international parents in Berlin. Elterngeld calculator, bureaucracy checklists, health check-up tracker, and a community map — all in one place.
this is such an awesome project to show not only a huge milestone for you personally when it comes to the story behind your 'why', but also so powerful in showcasing the drive to create, innovate, & lend a hand to others where you're able. nice work!
Thanks a lot, Nicolette. The best part is hearing feedback from users. One mother even said, "This is going to save my marriage" 😂
Make sense
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Really nice work, looks like the features are so easy to navigate 😍
The poll in my previous post divided the votes almost 50/50.
I will probably continue with the minimalist version of the design, but you can check the full case study of the cosmic-style design here:
That is such a great idea for an app! And I love the space-themed design!
I've been sending a lot of outreach messages lately as part of my job search, and pretty quickly ran into the same wall every time.
Writing a good, personalized message was never the problem. The problem was everything before it: finding the right contact, pulling context on the role or company, checking if I'd already reached out, then logging it somewhere so I wouldn't lose track.
There was a lot of repetitive work standing between me and writing the message itself.
So I started building a small dashboard (React, Vite, deployed on Vercel) to handle the deterministic stuff. It looks up contacts, pulls the context I need, and tracks everything in Notion automatically. I pretty much just do the writing.
Still early and still just for me, but it's already saved a chunk of time I used to burn on busywork instead of actually reaching out to people.
#ProductDesign #BuildInPublic #JobSearch
Building your own dashboard to kill the repetitive lookup work instead of just grinding through it manually says a lot. Did you set out planning to build something, or did the busywork hit a point where vibe-coding a fix felt faster than doing the research by hand one more time?
